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At my job I (Ben) often get to handle customer complaints. Whether I’m any good at it may best be answered by those doing the complaining. As with all things, you get better with practice. So this little Saturday morning homily is not a seminar from an expert, just observations from someone on the learning curve.

First, it’s important to distinguish exactly which kind of complaint you’re dealing with here. I think there are two main categories: Justified and Unjustified.

Justified scenario: You have provided poor service. You or someone you manage has slighted the customer through rudeness, oversight or incompetence. Examples: You overcharge someone or leave an item out of their bag. You screw up their food order. You insult their personal appearance, their taste in literature or their appalling lack of fashion sense. You serve them undercooked wings and give them food poisoning and hire Jeremy Piven as a spokesperson. Etc.

Unjustified scenario: You have provided reasonable, maybe even exemplary, service but it is unequal to the customer’s desires (however unreasonable those may be). You moved mountains but didn’t walk on water. You did not have the book or CD or piece of clothing she wanted. You did not make a plane arrive on time. You did not not cook a meal that was as tasty as the one he had years before and has committed to memory with incomparable nostalgia. You did not prevent a hundred other people from rearranging their schedules so as to not impede the pre-made plans of your disgruntled customer’s Saturday. You did not murder in cold blood the person in the Toyota Camry who stole your customer’s spot even when he clearly saw it first and had his turn signal on to indicate this fact. You are incapable of making someone’s spouse finally forgive her or father love him more. You cannot personally bestow unto him or her the peace that passeth all understanding. Etc.

Both scenarios require the same basics in the tool kit: The ability to listen, empathize, apologize, make restitution. Every customer, regardless of scenario, wants to be heard. But from henceforth, I will address only the second category of complaint, the Unjustified.

The Unjustified Complaint always results from the customer not getting what she wanted. The sooner you acknowledge this and apologize for this fact ( “I realize you wanted x, and I’m sorry we couldn’t deliver x for you”), the sooner you arrive at the fork in the road. The customer will either be disarmed by you cutting to the chase (and may even come to her senses and say, “You’re right, my complaining is pointless”), or — more likely — she will redouble her efforts because you are trying, sincerely, to be direct, kind and understanding. Most angry customers hate this.

“If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink,” say the Proverbs. “In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” That last part sounds a bit like retribution, but Eugene Peterson translates it a little differently: “Your generosity will surprise him with goodness.”

This is really the only way I know how to deal with an Unjustified Customer Complaint. The customer has pain to dispense, and you give him back kindness.

This is of course the hardest path to take. You (I) want an eye for an eye. It doesn’t take long in retail to wonder if you have a bull’s-eye pinned to your chest. Even if you manage to avoid repaying an unkind customer with unkindness, you still have the problem of inheriting it. The Unjustified customers will win this battle nine times out of ten. They will resort to name-calling. They will spit bile and condescension. They will say, to use one example from my week, “I will do everything possible to take my business away from a store run by a bunch of flippin’ morons.” (Use your creativity to substitute other words for “flippin’.”)

What next? If you give into temptation, you will unload this venom on someone else. Maybe someone you manage, maybe someone you love. Then everyone’s miserable.

To borrow a spiritual analogy, it’s part of what Christians believe about Jesus dying on the cross. When handed injustice and persecution, Jesus took it but didn’t give it back. You don’t even have to believe that the symbolic weight of that injustice is “sin” or subscribe to the idea of atonement to agree with the basic transaction there. Something stopped at Jesus and went no further.

An Unjustified Customer Complaint isn’t persecution (or, obviously, crucifixion), but it’s the meager spiritual offering I could make this week, and I tried to receive it without passing it on. I resisted saying to that customer, “Well, your mom is a flippin’ moron. Sha-blam!” But just barely. You start where you are.

Enough preposterous spiritual/retail analogies for a Saturday. Especially a day off.

CINCINNATI, OH [AP] — A customer at a local retail establishment approached employee Ben Vore today and asked him where the Bibles were shelved.

“Right over here,” Ben said. “Let me show you.”

As the two men walked to the section Ben asked the man if he needed a specific translation.

“No,” the customer replied, “just something small. I’m burying it with my cat today.”

One of our New Year’s resolutions was to eat healthier. We’ve made this resolution before, with mixed results. This year we made the resolution less from a vague desire for general self-improvement and more because of a writer named Michael Pollan. His book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, made both of us drastically rethink our diets. If ignorance is bliss, Pollan is a buzzkill. 

Ben, who works in a retail establishment which sells books, has always been conflicted about The Omnivore’s Dilemma. The book intrigued him, but the customers who asked about it did not. They were evangelistic about the book. They would grab Ben’s arm and insist he read it. They were generally what one might stereotype as “crunchy” or “granola” (or “crunchy granola“).  They spoke of produce the way people usually speak of rapturous sexual experiences. ( “The fresh squash I ate last night was nothing short of orgasmic.” Or, “You would not believe the tomatoes I just grew in my garden. I want to make love to them.”) Ben wanted nothing to do with them. Also, the words “raw food” scare him. We’re perfectly comfortable with our packaged food, thank you very much! 

If you’re brave enough to crack open The Omnivore’s Dilemma, however, chances are good that you’ll change your mind about not just packaged food, but also corn, meat, Chicken McNuggets, organic food, the FDA, food labels, mushrooms, hunting and gathering and, last but not least, your local supermarket.

About that Chicken McNugget: Do you know how many ingredients are in one? Thirty-eight. Chicken is one of them. But, as Pollan writes,

To go from the chicken (Gallus gallus) to the Chicken McNugget is to leave this world in a journey of forgetting that could hardly be more costly, not only in terms of the animal’s pain but in our pleasure, too. But forgetting, or not knowing in the first place, is what the industrial food chain is all about, the principal reason it is so opaque, for if we could see what lies on the far side of the increasingly high walls of our industrial agriculture, we would surely change the way we eat.

Pollan devotes himself to scaling those high walls. He goes to CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) and slaughterhouses. He visits a Wendell Berry-like farmer in Virginia named Joel Salatin, who invites Pollan to slaughter chickens in the killing cones on Salatin’s land, Polyface Farms. ( “It seemed to me not too much to ask of a meat eater, which I was then and still am,” Pollan writes, “that at least once in his life he take some direct responsibility for the killing on which his meat-eating depends.”) And he spends the final third of the book learning to hunt and gather. He forages for mushrooms, shoots a wild pig and collects Bing cherries from a neighbor’s tree (which he feels no guilt about once he learns about usufruct). 

Among the many things Pollan shows us along the way, several stood out:

1. The word “organic” doesn’t inherently mean “better.”
2. The words “free range” shouldn’t bring to mind rolling, verdant fields stretching to the horizon.
3. Mad cow disease was the result of cattle being fed other cattle. We conveniently forgot and/or never learned that. (Who wouldn’t go a little mad eating your own species?)
4. Americans eat one-fifth of our meals in the car.
5. Farmers are fond of the saying, “There’s money to be made in food, unless you’re trying to grow it.”
6. Food industry marketers are mostly evil.
7. We will never, ever gut a pig.

Pollan’s follow-up to The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food, attempts to condense all of this wisdom into practical dietary advice. Pollan is so good at condensation he boils it down to seven words: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” This seems disarmingly simple, but as 2009 has already taught is, simple is not easy. Take the first two words: “Eat food.” Well, we all eat food, right? Except how much of what we usually eat is actually food? What about microwave meals? Canned soups? Pop Tarts? They’re all … kind of food. But have you looked at the label? How many of those ingredients can you actually identify?

Pollan observes how these heavily processed foods are all located in the middle of the supermarket, whereas things that actually look like food — vegetables, fruit, fish, dairy — are on the periphery. So we’ve been shopping the periphery more lately, making a delicious roasted vegetable salad two, maybe three times a week, feeling pretty good about our diet until Pollan tells us that a more “radical” strategy would be to not buy food at a supermarket period, but rather at Findlay Market or directly from a farmer. Of course, the most radical strategy of all would be growing our own garden. (Just not in January.)

Erin, who has twice now been a vegetarian (her longest stint stretching from the end of college in 2002 until May of 2004 when she went to Italy and had prosciutto for the first time), has always felt a tugging at her conscience about the mistreatment and killing of animals. It wasn’t until she read The Omnivore’s Dilemma that she finally felt okay about eating animals so long as they were treated well, fed well, and killed well (i.e., with the utmost respect and reverence for the provision their lives offer). Salatin claims (and his customers testify) that his animals, which are allowed to roam freely in green fields munching on various grasses and acting like animals are meant to act instead of cooped up in an overcrowded cage, actually taste fresher and better. That means a more chickeny chicken, a beefier steak, and richer yolks for your morning eggs. Salatin and Pollan actually seem to make the case for the eating of animals to promote the cycle of life — so long as they’re the right animals coming from the right places. After Pollan, Erin is now ready to find a farm from which to buy eggs and chicken (and perhaps the occasional pork tenderloin). 

As we tiptoe into food radicalism, Eat This Not That: The Supermarket Survival Guide has the virtue of meeting us where we’re at. Given that Kroger and Biggs are still our major food suppliers, we’re trying to make smarter choices about what we buy there. ETNT offers, in colorful, simplified fashion, a comparison of the good and bad (or bad and better) options in the supermarket aisles. Ben will never give up his beloved cereal. But he might give up Basic 4 now that he knows it includes partially hydrogenated oils and “a huge helping of sugar” (13 grams). The better, if more cardboard-tasting option would be Fiber One Raisin Bran Clusters, with the same amount of sugar to appease Ben’s sweet tooth but less calories and fat and three times the fiber.

We’re not sure what Michael Pollan would make of ETNT (we suspect he’d approve), but we recognize that changing your diet, like changing any habit, will be incremental. Instead of going straight from A to Z by forsaking microwave pizza for arugula, it’s more realistic to go from A to B, then B to C, until you’ve gone so far that you can’t fathom your old philistine diet but can also envision a new and increasingly healthier one. 

Pollan concedes that eating healthier will cost more. But what have we sacrificed for cheap food? Our long-term health. Our connectedness to the earth. Our sense of community. (How many of us still sit down at a dinner table with friends and family anymore?) What have we lost by having the choice to pay 99 cents for a slab of beef at McDonalds (though slab implies something hearty and substantial)? “Eating industrial meat takes an almost heroic act of not knowing or, now, forgetting,” Pollan says. Our food culture, he suggests, has become heroic at not knowing.

There are many who are far ahead of us on the path away from industrialized food (what Pollan broadly calls “the Western diet”), and we recognize that we’ll never get away completely. But we’re at least at letter B, if not even C or possibly D. We think we eat healthier that the average person, but who doesn’t think that? Have we become one of “those” people Ben used to be leery of, given to waxing rhapsodically about tofu and sprouts? We’re not going to grab you by the arm, but if you, like us, are trying to eat more real actual food, we recommend (enthusiastically!) The Omnivore’s Dilemma as a great starting point.

A sampling of what we’ve been spinning lately. Before we get started, let’s revisit Ben’s favorite retail moment from the past month: 

BEN (standing at music counter at place of employment): Hi, can I help you find anything?

CUSTOMER (going straight for the Enya display): Is this the new Enya??

BEN: Yes.

CUSTOMER: Do you have any place I can listen to this?

BEN: (in head) Because you don’t already know exactly what it sounds like? (in head) Because you think maybe Enya’s experimenting with trip hop or doing a duet with Kanye West or something? (in head) Because you can’t wait to hear the single, “Ethereal Moaning That Sounds Identical To The Previous Eight Songs”? (out loud) Yes, you can hear it on any of our listening stations.

Ryan Adams & The Cardinals, Cardinology.  Did you know that Adams’s first solo album, Heartbreaker, was inspired by/named after Mariah Carey?* This is true. It is just one of a thousand bits of trivia Erin will gladly tell you about the prolific Nashville-bad-boy-turned-mature-songwriter, or so every new album review would have us believe since the Adams-is-a-slightly-less-self-destructive-male-equivalent-of-Amy-Winehouse storyline has been beaten to death. Musically Adams has matured, in the sense he’s stuck with a consistent backing band (The Cardinals) which has pushed him in new directions, primarily classic rock. Cardinology starts strong and finishes less strong. It’s good but is it essential? You will get a different answer depending on which Vore you ask. (Hint: The one who has ganged up with her sisters and tried to seduce Mr. Adams and his bandmates over a game of pool likes it more.)

Belle & Sebastian, The BBC Sessions.  For the Belle & Sebastian completist only. Those happy few of us will enjoy the essentially identical versions of early B&S standards, particularly if you misplaced your copy of If You’re Feeling Sinister several years back and were pleasantly reunited with a bouncy version of “Judy And The Dream of Horses.” The four previously unreleased tracks are a mixed bag. Two are so-so, but two are a kick: the sunny sing-along “The Magic of a Kind Word,” and “(My Girl’s Got) Miraculous Technique,” with its scratchy percussion samples and off-beat piano chords. 

Beyoncé, “Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It).”  Erin will gladly perform the dance to this insanely catchy song if you ask nicely. Do not ask Ben to perform it. You will cry.

Duffy, Rockferry.  Our guilty pleasure. Judge us if you will. But I’m beggin’ you for mercy (yeah! yeah! yeah!).

Ray LaMontagne, Gossip In The Grain.  The great bearded one delivers his most polished album, which sounds very good but doesn’t have the same pull on us that either Trouble or Till The Sun Turns Black did. Ray does lighten up a little to pen an ode to Meg White but it includes the dopey lyrics, “Meg White, you’re alright / Fact: I think you’re pretty swell / Can’t you tell?”

Mount Eerie, Lost Wisdom.  A recommendation from Eric Bescak. It sounds like it was recorded in an outhouse using a four track. (Eric informs us that the Lost Wisdom tour has included venues like abandoned old churches.) We like it. It is sad. Someone hold us. (Note to Ray LaMontagne: Put down your drippy love poems to Meg White and study this lyric: “With your hand down my throat/You held on to my heart/And pumped the blood through.”

TV On The Radio, Dear Science.  Fast becoming one of our favorites this year. We’ve always liked TV On The Radio more in theory than in actuality — sort of like, Let’s just admire one another from afar instead of doing the whole relationship thing. But we’re ready to go steady after this one. Poppier and hip-shakier than Return to Cookie Mountain, Dear Science rewards multiple listens as we’ve cycled through three or four different favorite songs (currently the rousing opener “Halfway Home” for Erin and the rousing closer “Lover’s Day” for Ben). Who wouldn’t love the lyric, “Swear to God it’ll get so hot/It’ll melt our faces off”?

Lucinda Williams, Little Honey.  Lucinda is the daughter of poet Miller Williams, whose poem “Love Poem With Toast” was given to us (framed) as a wedding gift by Eric Bescak. It came with a cassette tape which included a full 90 minutes of commentary from the men of 113 Bexley, ranging from a critical analysis of the poem to cryptic metaphors involving men in a boat casting about for fish, which served as an analogy for men seeking relationships with women and which may or may not have worked on at least six different levels. It was later presented in abridged form by Eric himself during a toast at the rehearsal dinner, when he used the phrase “we’re all in the boat holding our rods” in front of our immediate families and loved ones. For an actual review of Little Honey, we encourage you to read Mark Hoobler’s take here, with which we concur.

Rachel Yamagata, Elephants … Teeth Sinking Into Heart.  A fitting album to close on, as Yamagata has previously performed with Ryan Adams and Ray LaMontagne (who cameos here). We find it a little bit indulgent to make this album a double disc for thematic purposes when disc two has just five songs. We can name several single discs that have twice as many songs as this double album. (And not all of them are by Guided By Voices!) Aesthetics aside, Yamagata brings out the sensitive (yet feisty) female side in both of us, especially Ben, as his sensitive female side is buried quite deep and needs sweet, soft, intimate crooning to bring it out. We’ve listened to this album numerous times and still can’t figure out why it has a “Parental Advisory” sticker on it. Is there some secret track with Insane Clown Posse or something? 

——

* = This is a real quote from Mr. Adams regarding Ms. Carey: “People need to reinvestigate Glitter. I’m settled enough in my masculinity to say I don’t see anything wrong with Glitter.”

Before I (Ben) worked in retail, I was a youth minister for four years at a Presbyterian church in Pittsburgh. Moving from one to the other as I did, I was struck by the similarities between ministry and retail. Both are, in part, about service and meeting people’s needs. Both, in another sense, are about marketing; the examples are obvious in retail, but a church must also craft and present a message to its audience in the hopes of making a transaction. The language is different (the phrase “seeker sensitive” may be the closest hybrid of ministry and retail, with its nuanced understanding of both a message to pitch and a specific demographic to target) but the means are similar. You have needs: we can meet them. This is not to say that ministry is one big sales pitch with a gloss of holy-sounding spin. It is to say that a church which fails to care for and fill the needs of its members will fail just like any business would.

What five years in retail have taught me is that Christians need work on the spiritual practice of shopping. Ask anyone who works in retail or the restaurant business when his or her least favorite day of the week is, and many will say Sunday when church lets out. Are these highly visible shoppers — billboards for all of Christendom in their Sunday best — symptomatic of all Christians? Yes and no. Yes because Christians believe we all in some small, imperfect way are representatives of Christ, and to take that lightly would be to miss the point. And no because you can’t blame everyone for a few bad apples. But I’ve had enough firsthand experiences to know it’s not just a few bad apples.

I’ll give a non-retail example first. My dad is a pediatrician and my mom a nurse, and they work together in the same family practice. My mom also works as a receptionist a few days of the week, so she’s on the front lines answering the phones. When she answers she gives her name, Donna, but not the last name. Once a member of our home church, who sits on a committee with both my parents and cheerfully greets them every Sunday, called to complain about missing an appointment for her child. My mom recognized who the caller was but did not identify herself. The caller said it was not her fault she had been unable to keep a previous appointment and that she should not have been inconvenienced to reschedule and furthermore that she knows Dr. Vore and that he would not be pleased with how my mom was obstructing her access to him, and could she speak to someone higher up who wasn’t a lowly receptionist? This begs the question: What disconnect happened in this woman’s life that someone she worships with on Sunday is the same person she can belittle and bully on Monday?

Now, we are all hypocrites. No one can escape the gap between actions and words. We all have a bad day, or an outburst we regret, or comments we wish we could take back. And Christianity is insistent on the matter of forgiveness.

It’s also, to come back to retail, about serving one another. Yet we have a culture that encourages us to think of people who serve us as disposable. They are here to meet our needs, to give us what we want. If what we want is unreasonable, there is the unspoken assumption that superior customer service will go out of its way to meet the unreasonable. 

There is a legendary customer service parable, possibly apocryphal, about a man who returned a tire to Nordstrom’s. As the story goes, Nordstrom accepted the return despite the fact they don’t sell tires. The moral: Win the customer by going above and beyond what’s normal for what’s exceptional. That is undoubtedly good advice for world class customer service. But it also reinforces “The customer is always right” when it’s more accurate to say, “The customer is sometimes lying, pushy, condescending and simply wrong, but he’s still a customer.”* Where is the line between accommodating a customer and getting walked over? How do you provide great customer service yet not enable abusive customer behavior? And how do you meet exceptional needs and hold a standard that is still fair but (one hopes) profitable?

——————–

But back to Christians and shopping. Since you never hear a sermon about how to shop, let me offer a few, humble suggestions for Christians to consider when they’re pushing around a shopping cart. (Of course, we think these suggestions are good advice for everyone, regardless of spiritual beliefs. But the point is that Christians talk about being a light on a hill and spreading good news to all the world, which is what we’re called to do, yet some seem to conveniently forget that this applies as much at your local shop as it does in, say, Africa. And if we really care what people think about the church — which we should — then one segment of people who definitely need to be won over are those of us in retail.)

Enough throat-clearing.

1. The people working in retail are people. Some are Christians too. Whether they are or not doesn’t matter. Treat them with respect. (When Jesus said “Love thy neighbor” he meant everyone, and just to be clear he said your enemies are your neighbors too.) Don’t condescend to them. Say “thank you” and make eye contact and ask them how their day is going. Forgive them when they mess up. Please please please put down your cell phone when you’re checking out.

2. Complain productively and respectfully. When customer service is poor and you feel compelled to complain (which you should), do it the right way. It is invaluable to hear how we can improve what we’re doing wrong, but the way you complain makes all the difference in how it’s received. There’s no need to make a scene. When you speak to a manager, tell them exactly what you need from them to address the situation. They’re not a human punching bag either. And if they don’t respond appropriately, figure out where you can take your complaint up the chain. 

3. You can regulate too. My sister-in-law Bevin was in line when a customer checking out began dressing down the cashier. So Bevin said, “You know, acting like a jerk isn’t going to help solve the problem here.” And the other customers in line chimed in by nodding their heads up and down! Chastened, the customer stormed off in a huff. Besides illustrating the point Bevin is awesome, it’s a reminder that you’re never just a spectator.

4. Reward good customer service. Put your money where your mouth is and shop where you’re valued. Your money is your vote. At Coffee Please in Madeira on Friday mornings where Ben’s small group meets for breakfast, Lisa knows us by name and takes the food out to our tables (which she’ll push together for us). The same way that a church needs to be rooted somewhere to have real value in the community, support businesses that do the same. Places still matter. Support stores that make your town different than ours.

5. Be a good tipper. Look at where retail employees park and look at the cars they drive. They’re not driving Beamers. Sometimes they’re not even driving cars that should be on the road. If you can afford going out to a nice restaurant or a cup of joe every day, you can afford to be a generous tipper. If someone in retail is frugal enough to stash those tips away, it’s eventually going to pay for the unexpected but essential emergency like, say, new tires. (Poor customer service does not let you off the hook. There are ways to address this [see #2 above]. But when the cooks make a mistake, don’t take it out on your server.)

Enough preaching. Fellow retailers, I’m sure, can offer many additional suggestions which I’ve overlooked or neglected. I hope they do.

*=This truth needs to be told too: Nine out of ten customers are perfectly fine, and some are wonderful, at least in my line of retail. The lying, pushy, condescending and simply wrong ones are few and far between, but they tend to be slightly more memorable. 

(Special thanks to Jenny, Scott, Seth, Bevin and Erin for all their suggestions and feedback on this post.)

Today I (Ben) answered the phone at my place of employment in the retail business.

CALLER: Yes, I was wondering if you have a book in stock.

BEN: I can sure check for you. What’s the title?

CALLER: Children Who Remember Previous Lives. The subtitle is, “A Question of Reincarnation.”

BEN: Okay, let me look here. [searches computer] This is by Ian Stevenson? Children Who Remember Previous Lives, you said?

CALLER: Yes.

BEN: Unfortunately we don’t have that in stock but we could certainly order it for you. It looks like it would be here by the end of the week.

CALLER: Hmmm. Well, I can get it from Amazon tomorrow, so I think I’ll pass.

BEN: Well thanks for checking with us.

Less than five minutes later:

CALLER: Hi, I was wondering if you could check on a book for me?

BEN: Sure. Do you have the title?

CALLER: It’s Children Who Remember Previous Lives. 

BEN: Wait, did I just speak with you?

CALLER: Yes, I think you did.

BEN: This is the book by — [Ben checks the computer where the title is still up] — Ian Stevenson?

CALLER: Yes.

BEN: Um. We … don’t … have it.

CALLER: But I’m looking for another one of his books.

BEN: Oh, okay. I thought you were asking about the same book.

CALLER: No I’m asking about Children Who Remember Previous Lives.

BEN: I, uh, believe that’s the one I looked up for you.

CALLER: But the author wrote another book called Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation.

BEN: Oh, I see. [checking computer] You’re looking for Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. Yep, I see that as one we could order too. But this is a print-on-demand title — they actually print it when you order a copy — and it typically takes a little longer to arrive, usually seven to ten business days.

CALLER: No, I’m looking for Children Who Remember Previous Lives.

BEN: [speechless]

CALLER: Do you have that one in stock?

BEN [???]: No, we’d have to order that one for you.

CALLER: Oh. Well, I’ll pass then. Thanks.

——————–

The conversation taking place over at the Voreblog Readers Forum has shifted to best, rather than worst, concert experiences. There have also been a few inflammatory anti-Cleveland sentiments despite the fact many of our readers seem to have had quite positive musical experiences there. But what exactly was Mark Hoobler doing at a Yes concert around or about 1986, when he would have been just nine years old? Join the conversation here.

Say your co-workers found out halfway through the day it was your birthday. And say, being the wonderful colleagues that they are, they felt compelled to put together a present for you on short notice. What would they cobble together?

If one of your colleagues is Molly Traxler, she goes to her car and gets a Norfin Troll dinner tray table.

You may have questions at this point. What was this doing in Molly’s car to begin with? And why did she also have a pencil box, googly-eyed frog’s head magnet, a buckeye and one small, unclothed baby doll as well? And just how much joy can a Norfin Troll dinner tray table bring to one’s life?

Dave Powell demonstrates the transformation from non-Norfin troll existence to Norfin Troll existence below.

Dave, without tray table. He is sad.

[A heavenly chorus sounds from above.]

Dave, miraculously cured of leprosy.

Now you might be thinking to yourself, Hey, Dave and Ben sort of look alike. Well, you’re not alone. Frequently Dave and Ben are mistaken for one another by customers, Pub waitresses, even occasionally a co-worker or two. Just last week, an elderly customer at Dave and Ben’s place of employment came up to Ben and this exchange occurred:

CUSTOMER: Say, I need to tell you something. [He leans in very close to Ben] You failed me.

BEN: Excuse me?

CUSTOMER: You didn’t do your job.

BEN: I’m sorry, what was it that I did?

CUSTOMER: You remember this? [Customer holds up a book] You remember? I wanted two. You only ordered me one.

BEN: I’m really sorry about that. [Tries to reach for book so he can see if it will jog his memory] I don’t know–

CUSTOMER [pulling book away]: No, no, you didn’t do your job. Now I know no one likes to hear that and no one wants to get yelled at, but that’s what it comes down to.

BEN: Sir, I’m very sorry. Can I order you–

CUSTOMER: Ah, ah, ah — you failed me. It’s already been taken care of. The nice lady back there took care of it. But that’s because you didn’t.

BEN: Well, I’m glad it was taken care of.

CUSTOMER: All right then.

Thoroughly confused, Ben walked back to the information desk and saw Audrey. “Did you just talk to that man?” she asked. “Kind of a strange bird.” “He told me I failed him. No wait, he told me” — Ben leaned in uncomfortably close to Audrey — “‘You failed me.’” “Well,” said Audrey, “he was a little confused. He couldn’t remember what he ordered or how many, so I just told him we’d get him another one.”

Ben looked up the book in the computer and found the man’s special order. The initials on the order? DP.

——————–

Over at the Voreblog Readers Forum, talk has turned from unpleasant customer service experiences to celebrities who were either pleasantly down-to-earth or unpleasantly jerkish. Who has a good celebrity story? We want the dirt. Shovel it here.

Erin Vore was cited for going 72 in a 60 zone two weekends ago in Mount Orab, Ohio. This was her first citation for speeding, bringing the total number of citations between Erin and Ben to six. Herewith are the various strategies employed by the Vores when the cop asks for license and registration.

METHOD #1: HONESTY.

This was the method Erin employed in Mount Orab. “We had you clocked at seventy-two, m’am,” the officer said. “Do you know what your speedometer had you going?” “Probably seventy-two,” Erin said. “Where are you coming from?” Yes! Erin could say we were returning from College Summit and explain how we volunteered our time helping kids get into college without appearing to go for the sympathy vote. What good fortune! “Well, I’m going to have to cite you for speeding,” the officer said in response. The injustice! Cruel, cruel fate! Plus we had pulled over right in front of skunk roadkill, adding insult to injury.

Verdict: A virtuous, but failed, strategy.

METHOD #2: COMPLETE INCOMPETENCE.

Employed by Ben the first three times he was pulled over. “This is a 55 zone? Whoops, I thought it was 65!” “I’m not allowed to have a picture of Tony Danza taped to my rear window?* And I was going fifteen miles over the speed limit? Silly me!” “I was going how fast, officer? Man, I am completely and totally incompetent! I didn’t even dress myself this morning! I can’t see how giving me a ticket would make my sorry predicament any worse than it already is!”

Verdict: Failure, failure, failure.

METHOD #3: CRY.

Employed by Erin the only other time she was pulled over.

Verdict: Success. No ticket.

METHOD #4: HONESTY, EVEN WHEN IT SOUNDS LIKE AN OUTRIGHT LIE.

Ben was speeding home without his license when a cop pulled him over in Nashville. “Officer, I’m sorry I was speeding,” Ben said, “but a CD tower just fell on my wife’s head and she may have had a concussion.” “You don’t even have your license on you?” the cop asked. “I left it at work. She called, and I got straight into my car.” The officer looked off into the distance for a second. How many cockamamie stories had this man heard through the years, and which ones had actually been true? “Please be careful,” he said, and tapped the roof of Ben’s car twice.

Verdict: No ticket! Or concussion! But a nasty bruise.

METHOD #5: AMPLIFY YOUR SOBERNESS.

This was the method Ben used when he was the designated driver for a college outing to Cleveland. The men of 113 Bexley had seen the Cavs play earlier in the evening before enjoying a libation-intensive outing in the Flats. When the cop pulled Ben over at four a.m. in Fredericktown, Ohio, Ben had the good fortune of stopping right in front of a “Speed Limit: 35″ sign, which was the speed he had been driving in a 25 zone. This, coupled with the fact Ben could explain that although the Cavs had won they had still been mathematically eliminated from the NBA playoffs, saved the day.

Verdict: A success, so long as you tell your drunken friends they are to remain absolutely silent and let you do the talking.

METHOD #6: SILENT, BRUTAL JUDGMENT.

When Ben was pulled over the morning of December 26, 2005, for going 77 in a 65 outside Louisville, he took the high road. Clearly the officer knew it was the morning after Christmas. He could probably tell that Ben, alone, was saddened to be returning to Nashville so early because he was due to work, and surely the officer knew that, in retail, the day after Christmas is the most depressing day of the year. The returns, the deflated ho ho hos, the absence of cheer that had lubricated tense employee-customer transactions just thirty-six hours ago. The officer must know all of this. He has a soul too, right? Wrong. He writes the ticket. Still — still! — Ben takes the high road. No complaint. No appeal to their shared humanity. What these two men understand is cold, hard rationality. You don’t need to do this, Ben’s taut jaw is saying. I’m not going to beg. You know where I’ve been. You’ve been there too. Twelve hours ago we were both sitting hearthside with our loved ones, sharing a drink and a laugh while Christmas Story played on endless repeat on TNT. But that doesn’t need to be said. It’s understood between us, you and I. We get each other. The officer tears off the ticket. Oh, really? You’re still going to do this? Fine. I am going to murder you in my head right now. I mean, I am pulverizing you with my fists. Can you feel that? CAN YOU FEEL IT?? The officer walks away. Ben looks at the ticket. He thinks to himself, I should have begged.

Verdict: Total, absolute failure, and an endangerment to Ben’s immortal soul.

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* This is another story for another post.